Current commercially available gas turbines and other critical gas or fluid flow systems for use in connection with the energy industry can be extremely sensitive to contamination, such as, solid contaminants (i.e., particulates), liquid contaminants, and/or liquid aerosol, present within the process fluid flow. Solid contaminants, as an example, can act to wear rotating components, foul heat exchangers, contaminate cooling liquids, clog processing equipment, as well as affecting numerous other processing and equipment problems. Liquid contaminants, on the other hand, can accumulate or coalesce over time, and can, as the volume increases, travel along the sides and bottom of a pipeline and affect the efficiency of the fluid flow. Likewise, liquid aerosol or droplets, although small in mass, can similarly accumulate and build up over time, and have damaging effects on downstream equipment in the fluid flow system.
In order to minimize the occurrence of such contamination, filtration and separation equipment have been employed in connection with these fluid flow systems, so that contaminants present within the fluid flow can be removed therefrom. At present, most manufacturers have developed cleanliness requirement specifications for their fuel and feed gas flow systems. To accommodate such requirements, modern filters and separators have been designed to remove particulate contaminants with high efficiency. However, the issue with liquid contaminants or liquid aerosols may remain. Moreover, the selection of filtration and separation equipment that can provide adequate removal of the right contaminants can be a difficult task. In particular, there is available a number filtration and separation equipment adapted for handling different contaminants in connection with different applications. As a result, unless there is knowledge about the contaminants within the fluid flow, as well as their characteristics, inadequate filtration and separation equipment may be selected, purchased and subsequently installed. The failure to employ optimal or at least appropriate filtration and separation equipment, in many instances, can lead to inadequate removal of the contaminants resulting in damage to downstream equipment. In addition, operational costs of the system can be significantly higher as a result of poor performance caused by insufficient removal of the contaminants.
Even if the appropriate filters and separators may be used, an additional verification step may be needed in order to assure that contamination within the fluid system is being adequately controlled. Presently, most testing of fluid flow contaminants within an energy industry pipeline is accomplished by collecting samples of the fluid flow for subsequent offsite analysis. However, in many instances, a substantially accurate sample may not be available, especially when the sample cannot be isokinetically collected. In other words, if fluid entering the sampling system does not exhibit similar velocity and kinetic energy to the fluid flow in the pressurized process fluid flow, an accurate representation of contaminants within the fluid flow may not be collected. Additionally, at present, the collected sample must either be mailed or transported to a third party laboratory where the sample sits and waits to be measured and analyzed. During this period, the sample can change and the contaminants can often be lost to the sample container. Furthermore, as a number of contaminants may be volatile in nature, and due to the time consuming approach of the present protocol, many of the contaminant samples never get sent off for analysis.
Those samples that do get tested, however, may be measured using, for instance, a particle analyzer or counter to determined the amount or level of the contaminants and thus the cleanliness of the fluid flow. Examples of particle analyzers include light scattering analyzers, e.g., laser beam, and condensation nucleus particle counters, either of which can be employed to detect the level of particulate contamination from collected samples within the process fluid flow. Nevertheless, regardless of how sensitive or accurate the analyzers or counter may be, since the collected samples may not be an adequate representation of the contaminants within the fluid flow, the subsequent analysis of the collected samples may not provide an accurate picture or a real time determination of the level of contaminants within the fluid flow.
Moreover, knowledge of the amount or level of contaminants does not necessarily help to identify the source of the contaminants. In certain instances, it may be important to know the make up or origin of the contaminants, so that appropriate measures may be implemented to control the source of the contaminants. For example, if the source of the contaminants might be from additive chemicals or lubricating oils, or simply due to unfavorable conditions within the pipeline, knowledge of the source or origin can help to minimize the generation of contaminants from such source or origin.
Since contaminants within a collected sample and contaminants within a fluid flow can almost always be different, it is desirable to provide an approach that permits relatively quick accurate sampling for the measurement and analysis of contamination data, which data can subsequently be used to select the optimal filtration and separation equipment in order to control the existence of contaminants within the fluid flow being analyzed.